The Chain Part VIII

UPDATE: Next comic should be Wednesday. I need another sick day. Again, apologies. Everytime I’ve sat for 12 hours to make a comic last week, I woke up the next day 5 times sicker. Bare with me. Making this comic means the world to me, so understand how being perpetually zonked-out is pissing the everloving crap out of me.

That actually sounds like the flu, in my totally non-doctor unprofessional opinion. Most normal colds make me feel crappy but I can still get up and do stuff. The one time I had the flu I was sleeping about 18 hours a day.

Yeah, been there. I remember waking up at six am long enough to throw up, and then falling asleep again and staying that way until around two that afternoon. That was maybe 12 years ago, and I haven’t seen the like since and hope to never see it again.

Also not a doctor, but it’s been my observation that the same illness strikes different people in different ways. It makes sense when you consider how many symptoms of illnesses we talk about are actually the result of our immune system fighting the illness rather than the illness itself.

My fiance is from Newfoundland, she has said “aboot” once when she was talking really fast and was super excited to meet a voice actor. She even caught it and went to hide after cause she supported the stereotype by accident.

He may not know about it, but man, he’s got to have some idea. Surely Caleb would have to know about release forms and the like, and if he asks Danny for them, Danny would never be able to provide unless he’d forged them somehow.

Hmmm… Could this also be a commentary about the proliferation of second hand or pilfered works being spread around willy nilly on the internets as legitimate originals? Just a thought. But, that would only be if Caleb had a legal challenge towards his ability to carry said images. And I don’t know if Danny boy has the so called rights to the images as a stand alone company, or as a subsidiary to Caleb’s established business. But for arguments sake, could it be assumed that both are separate entities?

If so, then Caleb can assume with some safety that Danny boy here has set up legally. Unless this whole thing is all fly by the seat of your pants, then there is no insurance, no C.Y.A. and no money to fall upon when things go belly up. No nest egg, no kiss kiss, no bang bang. Sorry, movie quotes. Anyway, on what reason would Danny need to provide anything to Caleb? And why should Caleb need to demand paperwork. He’s not an ISO 9001 or such type of company. No need for him to need a requirement that would be the norm in the rest of the industry (i.e. legitimate soft core junk).

Caleb was letting Danny run a link farm. I’m pretty sure this won’t be his first rodeo on the sleazy side of the internet. I wouldn’t be surprised if his girlfriend hadn’t been part of countless foreign girlfriend/bride money wiring scams by this point.

Forging is easy, as Caleb doesn’t know anything about Ellie or Quinn. Find a few ladies down on their luck and offer them $20 to sign someone else’s name on a contract. Caleb sees two different sets of feminine handwriting as signatures and thinks it’s good.

Yeah, it seems like this is a ‘shield of atrocity’ situation. The truth is so vile that everyone assumes the opposite. Caleb will automatically figure that the girls are willing participants unless Dannie says otherwise, because what actually happened doesn’t fit in his mental model of how the world works.

That isn’t how a return on investment works. It’s usually how long a time period is expected for a business to see their liquid capital investment in a project to return based on a percentage of those profits from said investment into additional physical capital.

This would be, say something along the lines of Bossdude here wondering when he would see the amount of money invested in a top of the line media workstation that was a cash outlay of $12,000. But that is a bit out there. Why not work off of the next Patreon goal. Each convention would have to include the cost of admission/booth expenses, hotel, food, babysitting/daycare, gas, insurance, temporary business license (for the McFatFat buttons), car insurance and upkeep, clothes (although work clothes are a tax write off (no bikinis)), booth banners, hand outs,paying That one guy to keep Mr. Blue out of the back stage area at the hotel’s rented Chuckee Cheese band, paying Heather to promote David Bowie, hiring David Bowie to run the convention maze, as well as getting Michael Bay to show up as well. And don’t forget the space cowboy dance.

“It’s usually how long a time period is expected for a business to see their liquid capital investment in a project to return based on a percentage of those profits from said investment into additional physical capital.”

Well, no. Return is return, and that means money. There can be a timeframe involved in the expectations and the results but it is figured in actual earnings.

Just to point out, Liquid Capital is an oxymoron. Unless, you are talking about maple syrup. Liquid assets are basically cash, though there are more than that. Capital assets (aka capital goods) are the hardware of the business. The practice of calling money “capital”, is something promoted by the financial services, so that they can claim to be an “industry”.

While I am implying that Danny boy is a con artist of decent accomplishments (in his book (and being able to talk to girls, but that’s a bit of a negative because he’s a male chauvinistic pig)), his ability seems to have gained points in columns on both sides of the equation, being a consummate bull$h*t artist with access to multiple sources of funds, materials and the wherewithal of means seems to put him into a different class. Maybe his Kobayashi is coming. And we do know that he’s no James Tiberius.

Whether it’s making money or not, I still Caleb has every right to be epic-ly pissed that Danny took his money and risked it on a venture that he had neither approved nor had any say in.

Honestly, the best thing I think Caleb could do here is say something like “I’m taking the 40 grand, as repayment of the loan plus interest. Don’t ever contact me again and if you use my name as a reference or any of my other resources for ANYTHING or I will hunt you down and harvest your kidneys.”

The downside is that even if he’s ethical, he has no reason specifically to believe the site itself is not. Until this all blows up, he has no reason to assume this isn’t legit.

And the ‘double your money’ thing has pushed this into some really bad territory for Ellie and Quinn. That’s a LOT of subscribers, meaning their images have been downloaded by a lot of people, and are now scattered across Tumblr, Imgur and Reddit (or their in-universe equivalents). Hell, at this point, the most likely source of busting is Pumpkin, who probably looks on Imgur’s front page for cosplay stuff; all it takes is one good shot of Stupid Sexy Quinn’s Ass to get a bunch of upvotes.

And… I hate to say it, but this almost guarantees that the cams are located in the bathroom and bedrooms. You’re not gonna make that kind of money, that fast, on the ‘public’ areas of the household. Which means that unless we have a Deus Ex coming in the form of Tara time travel, or something similar, the girls are pretty much boned.

Ellie had two months of pretty much constant exposure to Danny and has not yet done more than scratch a bit at the surface. Just saying.

There’s knowing what we know. And then there’s knowing what the characters know. And those two can be entirely different. As for Caleb, he did know that Danny is at least somewhat a scumbag. But from what we know, building up linkfarms and not listening to advice or the opinion of his partners was the worst he ever found him doing until the money grab.
So Caleb might have a hunch that this hole could go deeper. But he doesn’t really have a reason to assume that it does as of yet.

Correct me if I’m wrong, it seems to be my understanding that Canadians have a lower moral impact in their business ventures. At least in Windsor. There did not seem to be any hiding nor over promoting of their adult clubs.

First thing, as far as I understand it the place of sex versus violence in cultural morals is flipped between the U.S. and most of Europe. I’m not sure where Canada falls on that spectrum, but I wouldn’t call different moral priorities necessarily less morals. More a different roll of the dice. Also for Canada specifically, based on the number of people and places I’ve seen advise U.S. citizens to pretend to be Canadian when traveling to other countries, that does say something regarding relative perception, anyway.

As far as that goes, Windsor was a place I heard a lot of people talking about as a college road trip due to lower Canadian drinking age, and I think some of the adult entertainment was considered part of the trip. Depending on how much of Windsor’s business is made up by those sorts of trips, it might be a bit skewed for Canada in general. Similarly to the way that going through Las Vegas would give you a skewed view of the prevalence of casinos (or elsewhere in Nevada for the prevalence of legally sanctioned brothels) in the U.S.

I think knowing Danny, save specific history for things on this level, would actually make this more believable. If someone squeaky clean tosses something like this off, you might wonder because you wouldn’t expect that person to be knowingly involved with someone who’d be willing to do this (they might know someone, but VERY long odds that person would tell them). On the other hand, someone a little shady comes up with something like this, you figure he’s much more likely to run into someone willing to do this and/or take conversations to places that he’d find out. That or exploit someone having money problems to get them to agree.

There’s a certain level of dispicable that you don’t automatically expect someone you generally consider a reprehensible human being to cross into, unless you see evidence of it. Child molestation is a frequent example of this sort of thing.

Sure, sometimes people see nothing. Sometimes it’s because it’s well hidden, maybe even didn’t exist until a traumatic event. Sometimes people just don’t want to see and successfully avoid it until it’s rubbed in their face.

Other times the statement/feeling is, “Well I didn’t think he’d go THAT far,” implying that “he” doing something bad wasn’t surprising, just that he chose this particular thing. We all tend to try to make our own peace with things going wrong in the world, and one coping mechanism is the realization that people who “cross the line” don’t usually then just run across every other line they can. Some people do (and are then frequently described as having “snapped” or something similar), others either consider it an occasional exigent circumstance or just kinda’ adjust which line(s) they won’t cross. Another mechanism is “flavors” of trust, for example with Danny, while he’s pretty despicable, we don’t have any hint that he has any tendencies towards violence and Rusche did state in a comment that while he was a perv and a sleaze he is not a rapist. On the other hand, a person who gets a bit more violent than they should may very well never consider Danny’s shenanigans. I know people in my life in both of those camps, actually (none that I know that would go as far as Danny, but in that direction).

If we didn’t come up with mechanisms like that, we’d all be way to panicky to get anything done, as we’d worry that the kid who stole a piece of bubblegum a decade ago now must logically go on a killing spree or that the guy who glared at us in traffic must be coming to rob our house for the perceived traffic trespass.

Just watched those Tales of Magic videos. Don’t believe they were around when I was a kiddo. But thought they looked, sounded, and felt a lot more like anime than American animation. Google seems to agree with me. Pretty sweet stuff though. Looks like there’s a ton of episodes on huge variety of fairy tails.

Watching those YouTube clips, I was certain that these were animated in Japan. The style matches 70’s Japanese animation, and the mouth movements had way too many syllables for them to have been originally in English.

After a Google search, I found that the show is probably “Manga Sekai Mukashi Banashi”:

My advice to you, is to start drinking heavily.
(or, in Bossdude’s sake)My advice to you (Chris), is to start drinking heavily (lots and lots of orange, apples, pineapple, cranberry juice(s) – depending on how you like your mixed drinks).

Caleb’s first lines reminded me of Scooter from Borderlands lol, I’ll see if I can track down that vid later for here ^^

As for everything else…I hope Caleb is smart enough to know that anything that seems too good to be true IS too good to be true. Wanting something in writing from the girls so they cant sue him or something just to cover himself or something.

Given what Alex had happen after his actions, I’m pretty sure Danny is going to end up dead or wishing he was dead after this.

Then again knowing my luck and how things work in the real world he’ll probably get away scot free somehow…

I don’t think he’s going to get off unharmed, but if he did, he’d do it by seemingly reluctantly handing the site to Caleb for $10-20k and wash his hands of it. Then he’d ride off into the sunset in his ice cream truck to start a new identity in another state and let Caleb and Vu hold the bag for the legal fallout when the girls find out what’s going on.

I do think that at least one Buckingham will get the chance to administer some justice to Danny, though. So if that is the flow of the story someone will find him later.

The ass kicking and murder should continue. He may have doubled your money but directly defied you and stole your money. Him expecting be off the hook, is even more disrespectful because he thinks your fury, pride, and general views can be bought with money. Fucker needs to be made an example of what not to do.

Definitely needs to have his knee broken to get the point across. Disrespect cannot be allowed to go unpunished. Afterwords you check his work for shady shit he thinks you wont find, because he just bought you off. Then make sure that it can’t bite you in the ass. If the rest is good you can reward him for a good job.

I actually did think Danny would pull something like that, with the money he’s making from that site. I kinda hate him that he kinda has a back up plan for almost everything.
Cmon man, really? Shoving his face in the toilet, like in a friggin high school movie. I don’t wanna say the guy deserves worse, but he definitely does.

Just some quick calculations:
$20k/month = 240k yearly, assuming no growth on the site. More than enough for 3 people fully salaried (assuming they don’t cut in Quinn and Ellie)

Let’s assume $20/month per person for premium, with 10% of total user base going premium. That means approximately 10,000 people are watching Quinn sort her Batman collection, Ellie fruitlessly hunt for a job, and Mr. Fatty Mc Fat Fat take his diabeetus meds…

I hate to rain on your mathematical parade, but sites like that usually require a bulk payment up front for however much time you want access for. you pay less per month the more time you buy. He might have doubled the amount in e account, but that income supply is going to dry up significantly, just spiking again every 3, 6, or 12 months.

There is that. Maximize the cost savings by selling long term subscriptions. But they, or at least some of them bill the clients each month at the sale price per month. Patreon does. But on the other hand, when running an illegal venture like this, it would be best to get as much money up front as possible that can be liquidated as fast as possible.

What if the breakdown for the cheapest package is $30 a month? But what it that’s only for a six month package? What if the basic, bare bones one month package is $50? I mean, $50 over six months is $300.00 vs. $180.00. And since Twobit mentioned the price, maybe there was an incentive to have the cheaper price on the larger package as if it were on sale. However, if he had a promotional sale for the users from the Canadian site along with the individuals to sign up with a paid package for the first three days. Everyone loves a sale, right?

We know Danny put 40k back in the account. We don’t actually know how much the site made, as there’s nothing indicating the site payment system was tied into the account. It might have made considerably more which Danny is hiding, or (unlikely) it made less, and Danny had some other source of cash to put into the account.

The payment could be tied into the account though. Danny does currently have access to it after all and probably believes, he will keep on having it in the future. And it would help pointing the blame in any judicial actions towards the Canadians.

Oh my god, dude, I was watching the two vids from the kids cartoons you got on here, I HAVE those videos *face palms*

Long story short, about 20 years ago there was a WalMart that had a bunch of VHS tapes they were getting rid of for $1 each. My dad bought them, along with Treasure Island and Last of the Mohicans. I still have those four, though the fifth tape vanished years ago and I’m still looking for lol

The question is- do you still have a VCR to play them on though? I think my parents still have a closet of tapes in their house, and their might even be a machine to play them, too, but I know for certain it’s not hooked up to any TV.

And if it breaks, these days getting it repaired is like trying to fix an antique.

Actually yes I do have a VCR, I prefer VHS to DVDs quite a bit. The sound is better and something about the picture I just prefer. I know people go on about the ‘crystal clear HD pictures’ but given that I inherited my folks old tube set, none of that really does much in my book.

And, no I have no intention of ‘upgrading’ if possible. 6 years back I was robbed, that TV and my VCR were the only things they left. The VRC cause it was old, the TV because it would take three large men to move it *if* they could figure out how to get it out the door. Those old tube sets have their own anti theft protection lol

The only time I prefer DVDs is when it comes to complete series for shows where it would take too much room to have them on VHS, like the Star Trek collections. For regular movies though, the only thing I like about DVDs are the deleted scenes and bloopers, that’s about it.

I’ve got my VCR, sitting in front of me. You’re right about it not being worth being stolen. I doubt that anyone could get $2.00 for it. It’s not totally old, but maybe fifteen years at least. Hardly used now.

See I have just the opposite, I love VHS because I rarely have time to watch a movie all the way through in one setting. With VHS I can just stop it and then come back later to finish it. DVD I have to go through all the menus and try to find a place close to where I was. Very *very* annoying. Especially when it can take me days to watch a 2 hour movie.

The last three or four devices I’ve used for watching DVD/BR movies have had the feature of remembering where I left off and I have to do more to get it to start at the beginning. My current BR player (cheapest one I could find in a brick & mortar store a couple of years ago) remembers at least the last 10 disks, which has occasionally surprised me, but is always nice to at least skip the warnings & marketing crap at the beginning. So that might be a generally solved problem these days.

Just thought I’d point out here, that despite putting the money back, it was still stolen. From a legal perspective it doesn’t matter that the money was remunerated before charges were brought up (Presuming, of course, that charges weren’t brought. They could very easily have begun proceedings before making the trip to the U.S.; admittedly, this is likely uncharacteristic of someone willing to get personally involved in the revenge process, there has presumably been downtime AND a partner who could have instigated things on her own.)

Although breaking and entering, and Assault (and possibly battery, although he looked pretty non-battered, I don’t recall where the swirlie falls on the legal scale) could complicate things. God, the complications on this one would make the people who write those courtroom dramas squeal in delight.

I don’t know that it’d meet the legal definition of being stolen since he was authorized to draw on the account and it was presumably set up for some sort of business purpose and putting more back than was drawn from it would suggest it was a successful business venture. It would depend on the terms of the contract and what was stated as the purpose for the money he was drawing from and how formal that was. If it wasn’t too clearly defined I don’t know that it’d wash as theft at this point.

“I told you not to spend my money.” Direct quote. And Danny is just the type to record what’s going on in his own apartment, just in case.

Even if he was legitimately authorized to withdraw business funds for business purposes, he withdrew for his own purposes. People get arrested and jailed for this all the time. Recently in my town a councilwoman was arrested for spending city funds to pay off her credit card bill. Although in business terms it isn’t theft, but embezzling. Sometimes money laundering. Either way it boils down to taking something without permission. Although you are right about it boiling down to contracts and such. Although, it also depends on whose name the site is in. If Danny owns it, then it is theft. If it is in joint name with his partners, then he has an argument against theft outright in the name of company investments.

I have some personal experience with this as well. Luckily for me I had a signed work order from my direct supervisor that saved me some jail time.

In that context, I read Caleb’s statement as he told Danny not to spend Caleb’s money on Ellie, as opposed to not at all. That would give Caleb a good chance to argue that the use was prohibited. If Danny spent his own money for the first con, that might cover as a misunderstanding.

I don’t know if it’d wash, but all of the “his own purposes” are things he could argue was business related and contributed to the profit. Especially if there’s anything “business development”-wise about his role. With him building link farms for them that’s quite feasible, and might be the sort of thing they didn’t want to have plainly written out in the contract, so it might’ve been vague engough for Danny to take advantage of.

While I have no experience with this, the thing I’ve heard from quite a few lawyers is that it’s standard practice in contract law to interpret ambiguities to the benefit of the party that did not write the contract. That being the case, I don’t know that Danny would win, but if it made it to a courtroom and he hadn’t turned tail for greener pastures, I think he’d have an argument. Sorry to hear you do have some experience, and glad you had the documentation you needed.

True enough. Although That One Guy is right about contractual decisions favoring the defendant. Aside from the human element the entire U.S. Legal system favors the defendant. That said, there is a natural human bias to favor the plaintiff. That and the litigation complications brought on by international laws (an area I am unfamiliar with) and the inevitable assault countersuit, not to mention quality of lawyers, jurors, judges, etc…

Too many variables for a definitive outcome, but definite strong grounds for theft/embezzlement and who knows how many other charges that would come up as a result thereof.

To me it looks like Danny’s still operating under his plan, and I’m guessing his plan is for the profit to cool Caleb off. Putting up much of a fight would make it harder to cool Caleb off and would risk any bruises received triggering the anger again.

I still think Danny’s likely to be playing Caleb, though. At this point I’m wondering if it’s to have someone holding the bag for legal consequences or if he’s going to try to convince Caleb to make another hands-off approach “investment” that Danny will then simply run off with.

Mr. Blue would like to ask that everyone please click on the top webcomic icon every time you visit this site, just above the Patreon teasers to help advance Shotgun Shuffle into the top 100.

If you can only vote for one webcomic a day because you don’t have a top webcomic account, please get one to support all of your own personal favorites. So far, we brought Chris into the top 130. Can we please get him into the top 100s this month?

As of this posting, SHOTGUN SHUFFLE is 118th in the standings on March 9th, with 168 votes total. 168/9 = 18 2/3s. So we have at least 18 people voting once a day, statistically speaking that is. I don’t know who had trained their cat to vote, but I know that it isn’t made legal by the Constitution of the U.S. soooooooo, I’m going to suggest that we be on the lookout for the Ratlantchulas, as Cinnamon may have trained them to vote.

However, if you’re worried about it, the the chair will entertain motions from the floor allowing for the boss dude to take off the first half of this week, thus moving Wednesday’s strip to Thursday, Thursday’s Patreon to Friday, and Friday’s strip to Saturday in order to allow the boss dude to rest and recuperate until 2 p.m. (whatever timezone the bossdude is in) for a fitness report evaluation at that time. If passed, then he will adhere to the so moved and adopted schedule for this week.

And I would like to bring in another motion stating that Rusche should take all the time he needs to get rid of his sickness and rather let an update drop, than force himself doing one when not in the shape for it.

Sleep as needed and get well. Remember that sleep deprivation as you feel better to catch-up is also bad and illness-inducing, so remember that hitting the ground sprinting when getting well frequently goes poorly.

I have a mild criticism regarding this strip. When Caleb uses his phone to check his bank account balance, I think the strip would have benefited from having a second similar shot. The first would be exactly what’s already in the comic, and in the second one Caleb could be furrowing his brow or narrowing his eyes, while optionally turning to stare toward Danny. I think doing that would help set the stage a bit better for Danny’s lines in the last panel.

Other than that, it’s a very good strip. I think the camera angles really sell it for me. I like how they really put the audience in the middle of the action.

I could say that is a good way, but the question could be, how long did Danny boy here wait until his cue? Wireless Internet is fast but not instantaneous. There are several other good nonverbal cues as well.

Or Danny boy could still be the jerk that he is and say something based on Caleb not compressing the phone into a space the size of Danny boy’s nostril. Caleb spouted murderous epithets last segment, here he is on one of the first steps of a rigorous rhetorical interrogation avec eau de toilette. The possible use of “aboot ” could be his regressing into a more primordial, pathological bent of his more honest want to kill for $20,000 dollars Canadian.

Therefore, could the pause be a more academic suggestion by the author for a non verbal cue that the next beat in the scene is ready and the character should speak?

Not saying it’d be a bad suggestion, but from the balance of story progress it’s not strictly necessary. It’s slightly more artistic, but adding another panel does add a significant amount of time for comic production.

That judgement call seems to be very much on the mind of a lot of webcomic authors, and you can generally find comments by them along the lines of “this was originally three comics, but I realized most was unnecessary and fit it into one” or “I wanted to show more about _____, but then it would’ve been into next month before you would’ve seen what just happened” or other things along those lines.

So I agree aesthetically, but I don’t know that I’d favor it in for the artistic touch versus time/comic pace question.

Its funny you say that because that was my original intention. But as That One Guy said, it was more of a time-issue.I was already challenged trying to draw the angles and perspectives you see above. I try to imagine the comic as much like a show as I can, but unfortunately I stuck with still being an operation with one person on staff. Haha